Commands

SketchUp has no command line. This does, and it is the fastest way to reach anything here: you do not have to remember where a thing is buried in a menu, only roughly what it is called. Everything below is on this one page so you can keep it open beside the program.

Using the list

1. Type / in the command bar along the bottom - or press the / button at the left of it - and the whole list comes up with a word about what each one does.
2. Keep typing and it narrows. /re leaves you /rebuild, /rect, /redo, /reface and the rest: the ones that start with what you typed come first, then the ones that merely contain it.
3. ↑ and ↓ walk the list, the wheel scrolls it, Enter runs what is highlighted, Tab completes the name without running it, Esc puts the list away. Clicking a row does the same as Enter on it.
4. The ones you have used lately sit at the top and the rest are alphabetical, so it works whether or not you already know the name. It remembers them between sessions.
5. Beside each name is a word about what it does - and on the row under the pointer, if that command takes something after it, what a real use of it looks like instead. Highlight /scale and the line reads /scale 1/4", which is the bit you would otherwise have come here to find out.

All of them

Seventy-one commands, grouped by what you would be trying to do. The in-program list is alphabetical; this is not, because when you do not know the name, the name is not what you have to go on.

Picking up a tool

Every one of these just puts a tool in your hand. The "Also" column has the keyboard shortcut, which does the same thing and is quicker once you know it, and any shorter names the command answers to. See the keyboard and the mouse.

The view

Where you are looking from. Every one of these flies the camera there rather than jumping, which is what keeps you from losing your place.

Where a thing sits

Moving the whole drawing, or what you have picked, to somewhere definite. /center and /tozero are the two a 3D printer cares about.

Settings for the drawing

Groups

All of them are on the groups panel too, and most are on the right button.

Faces and solids

A face is worked out from the edges that enclose it, not drawn; these are the words for when that needs a nudge, or for finding out why a shape will not print. See solids and 3D printing.

Sheets, saving, undoing

Building something

Wizards that write geometry for you rather than making you draw it.

The program itself

Under the hood

Diagnostics. Harmless, and mostly of interest when something has gone wrong and we have asked you to look.

A few worth knowing

• /holes draws, in red, every edge where a solid is not closed - the answer a slicer will not give you. See solids and 3D printing.
• /center centers what is selected on the floor - across X and Y, sitting on Z zero, which is where a 3D printer's slicer expects to find it. /tozero stands it on the floor too, with its near bottom corner on the origin rather than its middle.
• /cube puts a view cube in the top right of a 3D view. Click a face to look at the model square on, an edge for a half turn between two, a corner for the three-quarter view most drawings are read from - and drag it to turn. It also shows which way you are facing, which the VIEW menu cannot. Off until you ask for it, and remembered after that. /cube tl, tr, bl or br puts it in whichever corner suits, and /cube fitselection off stops a click framing what you have picked. With nothing picked it never re-frames: it just goes to the view you asked for.
• /manual opens these pages.

What it looks like

See also

• The keyboard and the mouse
• Typing measurements
• All the tools